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Daily Archives: March 2, 2012

There’s a good story brewing at USA Today. The online managers are in control and all reporters AND editors of the print sports section were told in a meeting Thursday they will have to reapply for their jobs. Obviously they won’t be rehiring some, and others will get lower pay. That’s some 90 or so people. Even the ME of the section has to re-apply for job if he wants to keep it.

The mother of the DePauw student whose arrest records were used in an Investigative Reporting Techniques class says in a letter to The DePauw that “it appears to me that [journalism professor] Mark Tatge wanted to create news – he wanted an academic freedom discussion, he wanted The DePauw to print a controversial story, he wanted to highlight the drinking problem on campus, he wanted to make himself the center of a story – and he didn’t care if a student or the university was damaged.” Betsy Stephens adds:

There is lesson here – it’s about people in power using information on people they influence in a negative light publicly – socially it’s called bullying, in the corporate world it’s called harassment. Usually these offenses are shunned and punished. I guess at DePauw it gets you article in the paper. Shame on Mark Tatge and shame on The DePauw for printing it.

We regret to announce that after 12 years, Ken Babby (Chief Revenue
Officer, General Manager, Digital) has decided to leave The Post in order
to pursue other digital ventures. We will miss Ken greatly.

Ken Babby

Since assuming the CRO & GM, Digital role, Ken has made tremendous
contributions to the growth of washingtonpost.com and our other digital
properties. Under Ken’s leadership, all three of the company’s emerging
businesses (mobile, video, and email) saw exponential growth in traffic,
downloads, engagement, and revenue. The site experienced record traffic in
2011, with Ken working alongside his partners in News. He implemented many
of our e-commerce efforts on the site including the launch of Post Tickets.
In addition to his digital contributions, Ken and his team oversaw the
success of many of our new businesses including: Washington Post Live, The
Capitol Deal, and Capital Business. On the sales side, Ken was also
responsible for leading the Washington Post Media and Washington Post
Digital sales teams, working with VPs Wendy Evans and Steve Stup. Read More

Patch communications vice president Janine Iamunno scolded me a bit last week for not contacting her office before posting the “Patch president” vs. Main Street Connect founder spat at Business Insider, so I wanted to make sure I got in touch with her before posting the new Pando Report about AOL/Patch reportedly laying off hundreds of employees next week.

I got this auto-response from Iamunno: “I’m out of the office but if you are a Patcher or a reporter with an urgent inquiry, please contact Joe Wiggins. Otherwise, I will respond on Monday. Thank you, and go Patch!”

The Watertown Daily Times — the smallest paper in the country with a full-time Washington bureau — is closing that one-man office on March 30. Bureau chief Marc Heller tells friends and colleagues: “I have nothing but gratitude for the newspaper and the generations of Johnson family members — also Columbia alums — who’ve owned it and run it in the old-fashioned tradition of an editorially-driven, independent newspaper.”

Because of continuing financial pressure, we have decided to close the Washington bureau, with the target date being the end of March. Bob has been working with Marc for several months now to make this cutback as painless as possible. Unfortunately, word of the closing got out before we were prepared to announce it, and an item has appeared this afternoon on Politico.com. Bob will post an announcement on our website momentarily, and we will publish the information in Thursday’s issue.

Ken Layne writes this morning: “Your longtime editor will finally stop disappearing for months at a time and officially hand over this Important American Publication to a deserving and talented political writer/editor, Ms. Rebecca Schoenkopf. She is a feared and respected Liberal Woman, so the wingnuts will just love her (as they plot to send her to Gitmo).”* Your Wonkette has a new Publisher/Editor

ProFlowers’ Twitter stream is filled with responses to complaints about the florist running ads on Rush Limbaugh’s show. “We heard about the comments and we will reevaluate our marketing plan,” reads one tweet. @SleepTrain has responded to complaints, too, on Twitter.